Atomic number 110 · Transition metal
Darmstadtium Ds
Darmstadtium is named after Darmstadt, the German city at the heart of superheavy element research. First made at GSI in 1994, it sits in group 10 with nickel, palladium and platinum and is predicted to be a noble metal much like platinum.
Key properties
| Atomic number | 110 |
|---|---|
| Atomic weight | [282] (No stable isotope; mass number of a representative isotope in brackets) |
| Category | Transition metal |
| Group | 10 |
| Period | 7 |
| Block | d |
| State (25 °C, 1 atm) | Solid (Predicted) |
| Melting point | — |
| Boiling point | — |
| Density | — |
| Electronegativity (Pauling) | — |
| Atomic radius (van der Waals) | — |
| First ionization energy | — |
| Electron affinity | — |
| Oxidation states | 8, 6, 4, 2, 0 |
| Discovered | 1994 |
Electron configuration
- Condensed
- [Rn]7s2 5f14 6d8
- Full
- 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 3d10 4s2 4p6 4d10 4f14 5s2 5p6 5d10 5f14 6s2 6p6 6d8 7s2
- Electrons per shell
- 2 · 8 · 18 · 32 · 32 · 16 · 2
Orbital diagram
Electron configurations of some superheavy elements (beyond 103) are theoretical predictions.
Position in the table
Discovery
Several laboratories tried to make element 110 during the 1980s and early 1990s without conclusive results. On 9 November 1994 Sigurd Hofmann's team at GSI bombarded lead-208 with nickel-62 ions and detected an atom of darmstadtium-269. A nickel-64 beam soon yielded darmstadtium-271 as well.
After the joint working group credited GSI, the laboratory proposed the name of its home city, and IUPAC approved darmstadtium in 2003. Because 110 is the German emergency telephone number, a joking name along the lines of 'policium' is said to have been floated along the way.
Origin of the name
The element is named after the city of Darmstadt, home to GSI. The symbol is Ds. It follows berkelium and dubnium as an element honouring a centre of research.
Main uses
- Basic research: It has no uses outside science.
- Predicted chemistry: It is expected to be a noble metal resembling platinum. Its longest-lived isotope would last long enough for chemistry, but production rates are still too low for experiments to have been carried out.
Isotopes
There are no stable isotopes. The longest-lived, darmstadtium-281, has a half-life of about 14 seconds and was observed in the decay chain of element 114, flerovium. Darmstadtium-269, the discovery isotope, lasts only about 0.2 milliseconds.
In everyday life
It does not exist in nature; only a few atoms at a time are made in accelerators and they decay almost immediately, so it has no connection with daily life or health.
Good to know
- Darmstadtium received its official name in 2003.
- The discovery isotope, darmstadtium-269, decays in a fraction of a millisecond.
- It sits directly below platinum in the periodic table.
Same group (10)
Data sources · Properties: PubChem Periodic Table (US NIH/NLM public data) · Atomic weights: CIAAW 2024 abridged standard atomic weights · Names: Wikidata (CC0); Korean names follow the Korean Chemical Society. Retrieved 2026-09-23.